


Strings

by orphan_account



Series: The Exiles [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Gen, Minor Narti/Zethrid, Season/Series 04, Time Loop, Time Travel, vldtropesfest2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-04 19:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12777651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Narti dies, she finds a string in the darkness, and follows it through time, through Kova's eyes, back through a void. And she finds a child there.





	Strings

**Title:** Strings  
**Trope Showcased:** Time Travel  
**Author:** anonymous  
**Rating:** G  
**Content:**  Narti & Lotor, minor Narthrid, QPP Acxa/Narti, mindfuckery  
**Warnings:**  child neglect/abuse (nothing in detail), canonical character death/almost death  
**Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters belong to Dreamworks, Netflix, the creators of Voltron, and associates. No copyright infringement intended.  
**Summary:** When Narti dies, she finds a string in the darkness, and follows it through time, through Kova's eyes, back through a void. And she finds a child there,   
**Notes:** Part of "The Exiles" series, but not necessary to read the others.

 

 

It would almost have been better, thought Narti, if she could have remembered betraying him. She knew she had. Why else would she have found herself losing consciousness with his sword (its particular feel, its particular smell) leaving its jagged mark down her torso?

_Kova,_ Narti thought with desperation. She could hear the ship leaving. She could feel something bitter hanging in the air. _Kova, where are you-?_

But there was nothing but the faint sound of Haggar’s laughter, and the taste of copper in her mouth.

She was going to die.

_Not here. Not now. Not today._

Narti lashed out with her mind, one of her hands clawing at the air – and the laughter stopped. She could _feel_ them – the strings wrapped around her arms and legs, tightening and tightening on Haggar’s martyred marionette as she fought back –

Her hand landed on Kova, who bristled and hissed like she’d never heard him do before –

-and the world went black.

_Lotor,_ she thought as she fell. _I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to._

\----

Narti was the best of Wasia Alaqa’s children. She knew how to link her spirit with the lichens of the caves to tell them where to grow, or with the reptiles that crawled in the dark to ask them to feed the clan. Everything was a cycle; if you felt the pain of something as it died, you respected the sacrifice it made. You felt its death as a little blow.

But nothing – _nothing_ her Wasia had taught her prepared her for the sickness that grasped her when she clung onto Kova’s fur, her life slipping away into the cold metal below her. The last image was burned into Kova’s retinas, into her head – Lotor walking away, his shoulders shaking with rage, the others staring after him with horror –

And it began to change. She was slipping, desperately trying to hold onto something, but there was nothing left.

Nothing but a thread.

Narti found the thread with her fingers. It was mental more than physical, but where she was hovering there seemed to be very little difference. It vibrated between her fingers, and she listened to it, tasting the sound on her slit tongue. Then she followed it, deep into… somewhere. She didn’t know where she was. She could barely remember who she was.

_I am Narti of Clan Alaqa. I am Narti, Second General of Prince Lotor. I am Narti, heart-bonded of Zethrid, hand-bonded of Acxa, shield-bonded of Ezor –_

All of these things that were no longer true.

She refused to falter. That was what had kept her going all these years, wasn’t it? The refusal to _stop._ You didn’t have to be moving fast. You just had to be moving.

And so she did, even as everything else fell away, and finally – _finally –_

-she felt heat on her face.

“Good heavens,” came the breathy exclamation. “How long was Kova in there?”

“Only a moment.”

Kova?

Narti could feel Kova’s mind tugging on her. She opened Kova’s eyes – and sprang back, tail lashing up in a protective stance.

It was Haggar. But not as she knew her. She could _feel_ the difference in the air around her, even as she recognized the voice, the stance –

“Identify yourself,” came the growl.

Narti turned, tried to listen to the voice – but Kova’s eyes were faster.

Zarkon. It was Zarkon. Younger, healthier; but undeniably the emperor himself.

Narti found herself pulling her fist to her chest before she even meant to.

“ _Saluting_ you? Well, well – whoever that is they seem to know who _you_ are,” came another joking voice. Footsteps sounded behind her, and then somebody prodded her forehead gently. “Say, can you _see?_ ”

She pushed the hand away, and Kova glared up at the person intruding into her personal space. Tall, brown-skinned, white hair – Altean. And apparently _not_ the most delicate.

“Alfor,” sighed Haggar. “Let the poor lady breathe.”

“Oh, so he’s a girl now?”

“She, yes, or at least that’s just as reasonable an assumption as _yours_ is,” Haggar snapped back at Zarkon. Narti wished, more than ever, that she had her voice back. Her crushed windpipe had never seemed as much of a hindrance than now when she didn’t have Zethrid by her side or any of her trusted weapons. She had her armour and Kova.

Then her vision turned upside down, and she realized that Kova had leapt into somebody’s arms. Kova’s head lifted, and –

-and her mind was filled with Haggar’s face. A young face. An _Altean_ face. But still – Haggar’s –

A soft keening left Narti’s lips, and all three of them glanced back up at her. Then their footsteps shifted around – “What _is_ she complaining about –“ “We don’t know what’s on the other side of that rift-“ “I keep telling you two to stop _playing_ with that thing-“ “It won’t talk to us-“ “I’m not sure it can-“

Narti whipped her tail out with a frantic fury, and was rewarded with a yelp from behind her. She could feel the other two in front of her, two lumps of body heat and racing hearts, and shoved out at them, falling onto all fours as she raced away. She could get more speed on all fours, even as her heart broke and she felt Kova vanish into the distance.

Then…

Then there was something else. Another thread in the darkness. She came to a sudden stop, bowling herself tail over tip, then crashed into a wall. She didn’t know this planet – she didn’t know its rhythms, its resonance, its cracks, and terraces.

The thread was a heartbeat – a tiny, shaking heartbeat. It was on the other side of the wall she’d crashed into. Narti traced her hand over the stucco, searching for some irregularity, some hint to what she’d crashed into.

_Haggar stared down at Kova, eyes full of worry. “Why were you in there?” her lips mouthed –_

Narti tried to shake the image away. She was still bonded to Kova, even in the arms of another. That hurt. She didn’t even know if it was _her_ Kova. For all she knew, she’d finally crossed between universes, completed Lotor’s goal in the most cruelly ironic way possible. But even with the possibility of the woman _not_ being Haggar, her face was too close for comfort. The curve of the eyes. The shape of her nose. The angle of her chin.

Narti’s fingers hit an edge. She’d found – well, it was a window, not a door, but she’d take it. The sun out here was hotter than she’d ever had to deal with before, and her hood hid her skin from the worst of it, but she was a cave-dweller – she didn’t _like_ deserts. She found the grain in the stucco, and clambered through the window.

The heartbeat was flickering. And as her feet met the floor of the room, the baby in the crib began to cry.

\----

When Lotor had first freed her from the slavers, the blood of her torturer still staining his hands and clothing with a coppery, bitter smell, he had allowed her to use his eyes. She had kept her distance from the rest of it out of politeness, even if the images and feelings drifting up in his head had worried her and intrigued her in equal measure. His parents, for one. There was no reverence left in his mind for them, no matter how he managed to bow and scrape to their face.

Eventually, Lotor had closed his eyes. The two of them had been alone on his ship, a small thing following his father’s convoy. “Don’t worry yourself about that,” he said with an exhaustion that wound itself through every note of his voice. “I’m fairly certain they stole me from some other poor whelp.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness – couldn’t have, even if Narti hadn’t still had her hand on his forearm.

She was still learning how to make words with her mind, to replace the voicebox that had been so irreparably shattered. … _Loyalty._

“Hm.” His mouth twitched into a smile. He focused on the control panel ahead of him. And inside his mind –

_Blood doesn’t matter. But loyalty does._

Narti knew she’d made the right choice.

\---

There was something eerie about how familiar he felt, even from across the room, even – if she had to guess – ten thousand years before she’d ever known him.

Narti crossed the room, letting her hands and tail stroke over the bars of the crib. A tiny set of fingers reached out, brushing over her warm scales; she felt the breath catch in her throat as she opened _his_ eyes. For the first time. For the hundredth time.

She saw herself as she appeared to him. The light on the ceiling haloed around her shoulders, softening all of her hard edges into a blur. He didn’t even notice that she didn’t have eyes. Instead, he reached up for her face, a single thought coalescing into a word that he didn’t know how to cry out yet. _HOLD HOLD HOLD HOLD –_

Narti opened and closed her hands self-consciously. They weren’t claws – not _really –_ but they weren’t meant for anything as delicate as that. She’d held her loved ones, she’d bandaged their wounds after their battles and let them clean hers in return –

-she’d held Lotor before, when his nightmares had leaked through the thin walls and she’d comforted him while he was still too drowsy and half-asleep to let his arrogance intrude.

But she wasn’t motherly.

“What are you doing?”

She startled, and the small hand lost contact with her tail. She didn’t know how she’d missed the footsteps or the rapid heartbeat. But –

“I don’t know what you are.” The voice was low and nervous. “You look Galra. But you’re something else as well, aren’t you?”

She thought perhaps she’d heard his name earlier. Alfor. His name was Alfor. Slowly, she raised her hand to her throat, and pointed to the scar there.

“…You can’t speak?”

She shook her head.

“You can’t speak and you can’t see.”

She nodded – then shook her head again. She wasn’t sure what a correct response to that was.

There was a _shnk_ of metal against metal, and his heartbeat slowed down. He’d put away his weapon. Narti hadn’t even known he’d had it out. “What brought you here? To this room?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. Zethrid had found how to word things for her that she didn’t have to struggle to make herself understood, and when all else failed, she could just brush her fingers over her companion’s skin. But the man was on edge enough that Narti wasn’t going to touch him.

She slowly pointed down into the crib, then put another hand over her heart. It had more than one meaning – probably too many – but it was what she had.

Alfor sighed. “That’s Honerva and Zarkon’s child.” He wasn’t leaping to protect him, she realized. “His name’s Lotor.”

Narti knelt down, fingers brushing over the bars again and then touching the child’s hand. She could see Alfor properly now, and the reluctant, worried look he was giving Lotor. Something was wrong. She couldn’t figure out how to ask.

- _HOLD HOLD HOLD-_

She stood up and reached into the crib. She wasn’t going to let him suffer.

“You – you should stop.”

She ignored him. Lotor was still crying. So she lifted him into her arms, let his fuzz of soft hair nestle into the crook of her arm, and immediately, he stopped crying.

Alfor was still standing stiffly by the door. “…I’m not going to let you take him.” He didn’t sound as steadfast as he should.

Narti frowned. Then she pressed her fingers to Lotor’s cold cheek, and let herself drift into his mind.

There were only a few scattered memories of Honerva’s face. Perhaps a handful more of Zarkon’s.

Not a single memory of being held. No whispered words of comfort. No songs at night.

Narti remembered standing watch over her Wasia’s body at the cavemouth. She remembered her Wasia’s gentle encouragement.

She was the best of Wasia Alaqa’s children, in this life, and the next.

She still had a dagger at her hip.

She was still using Lotor’s eyes, and she moved like a lightning flash, burying the dagger into Alfor’s side and barrelling past him. There was a crack when his head met the wall, but he would be fine – she could hear his heartbeat still.

And then she was running, running across the trackless wastes with the man who was going to kill her cradled in her arms.

_Don’t worry,_ she whispered to him, as she searched the skies with his eyes and found her way to the port. _Don’t worry. You’ll be safe with me. For as long as I can make it happen._ Not forever. Reality would have its way. Haggar would never stop searching for something that belonged to _her._

_Don’t worry,_ she whispered in her gentlest voice, her forehead pressed to his, as they left Daibazaal behind, as she raised his face to the glass window and pretended to understand stars she’d never seen.

_I’ll keep you safe._

The cryopods would be buried for as long as she could manage. She would freeze herself with him. And eventually – eventually – Haggar and Zarkon would find them, but she would have given Lotor all the love and forgiveness she could spare before then.

_Blood doesn’t matter,_ she whispered, even on the nights when she wanted to cry, when she missed Zethrid so much it felt like she was breathing in powdered glass –

- _loyalty does._

\---

Narti was the best of Wasia Alaqa’s children. She knew how to hear the resonance of the stars and the earth below her feet. She knew how to soothe her ward to sleep when the nightmares got too bad. She knew that death and life were two sides of the same coin.

Every death was a little blow. But in the end, everything was connected.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of [VLD Tropes Fest](http://vldtropesfest.tumblr.com) | Comments and Kudos are appreciated | Anonymous creators will be revealed after the masterlist is posted!


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